Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:31:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IlUsW-00028g-EA for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:29:56 -0700 Received: from pi.meson.org ([66.134.26.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IlUsQ-00028S-By for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:29:55 -0700 Received: (qmail 17330 invoked from network); 26 Oct 2007 15:29:45 -0400 Received: from nagas.meson.org (HELO ?192.168.1.101?) (1000@192.168.1.101) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 26 Oct 2007 15:29:45 -0400 Message-ID: <47224029.6050106@kli.org> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:29:45 -0400 From: "Mark E. Shoulson" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20070728) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: please help me phrase this correctly Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -0.2 X-Spam-Score-Int: -1 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5685 X-Approved-By: jkominek@miranda.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mark@kli.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Content-Length: 1889 Quoth Jared Angell > Wow, why doesn't he speak Elvish? > > Anybody speak Elvish? > > On 10/25/07, *Matt Arnold* > wrote:Mark Sholsen will know. He > speaks Lojban, Hebrew and Klingon. Ask for > clsn on the Lojban IRC chat. > -Eppcott > > On 10/25/07, C Phillips > wrote: > > i don't know where else to ask and you guys seem the best liguist > assistance > > so....i was hopeful I worked a little on Elvish a very long time ago. There just wasn't enough agreed-upon information to get a good handle on it. I've seen/bought/read various grammars of Quenya, which are routinely trashed by authors of other grammars... I now have Salo's book on Sindarin and maybe I'll flip through it, especially now since I happen to be re-reading Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Sindarin was the more widely-spoken Elvish, but Tolkien left more information on Quenya. Actually what would be even cooler would be info on Westron, the "common tongue." That's what the characters in Tolkien's head were speaking, not English. Many of the place- and character-names are translations from Westron into English, by way of the ancient roots of each (i.e. ancient obsolete roots in the fictional history Tolkien made up for Westron being translated into ancient obsolete roots in English, and then run forward in time to come up with an equivalent name.) You can find some Elvish speakers floating around the constructed language community--including among Lojbanists. Ivan Derzhanski, a great contributor to Lojban, has also done a lot in the "tolklang" community. There is, or at least was, an awful lot of controversy and anger in that community, though, so tread carefully. Any other languages you want to know about? I have a couple more... ~mark